Review: HTC 8X is the best Windows Phone 8 handset out there (Updated)

HTC 8X

Release Of HTC 8X

Windows Phone 8 was finally released earlier in November. With it, two major contenders for the title of ‘premier Windows Phone 8 handset’ emerged: the HTC 8X and the Nokia Lumia 920.

The Lumia 920 carried forward the mobile commitment Microsoft and Nokia made to each other last year with the Lumia 900, but HTC is now making a play for the Windows Phone crown. Microsoft offered ringing endorsements for both entries, but the one for the 8X felt a bit more sincere. After handling the phone for a bit, we can see why: we judged the HTC 8X to be the best Windows Phone 8 handset available in the first part of our ultimate smartphone guide. The HTC 8X simply gives us more reason to take Windows Phone 8 seriously than any other handset has before.

Though HTC phones aren’t always all-around impressive, they tend to nail one aspect more than any other manufacturer: body design. My favorite all time phone to hold remains the HTC Radar, and the 8X harkens back to that design in some ways. The rounded edges are much sharper, but the way the curved polycarbonate back feels in-hand is really comfortable. The phone isn’t all that thin, but due to the tapered edges it feels much slimmer than its closest competitor, the Nokia Lumia 920, despite a maximum thickness difference of only 0.6 millimeters.

Design Of HTC 8X

The sleep button is placed on the top right corner, with a volume rocker and camera button on the right side. All of these buttons are very low-profile and shallow, so it’s hard to feel them click. The microUSB port is centered on the bottom of the phone, and the SIM port occupies the other side of the top right corner. A single speaker is centered on the lower back of the phone. An indicator light that turns red when the phone is charging is placed inside the speaker grill above the screen.

The sound quality of that speaker (Beats Audio-certified and approved by Dr. Dre, per usual for HTC) is actually quite impressive—it’s loud with little distortion at the top volume and the bass is solid, if not resounding. Call quality is typical for a cell phone: not fantastic but you can discern at a basic level what other person is saying. They can do the same for you.

When it comes to rendering imagery within apps or the browser, though, the quality of the screen is not so great, particularly if it’s a non-mobile webpage. Fonts in can be a bit on the jagged side, and we often get pages that load off-center. Strangely, the mobile versions of YouTube pages are highly susceptible to this.

We were impressed with the quality of the 8-megapixel camera in the phone. The lens is f2.0, 28mm, and backside-illuminated, and we found it took great shots even in low lighting. HTC does not make the same grand low-light claims that Nokia does for its Lumia 920, but we didn’t find the performance lacking in any way.

The screen is crisp and bright within the operating system, even at the lowest brightness setting (of which there are only three: low, medium, high). Compared to the surrounding bezel, blacks at the highest brightness setting are noticeably washed out but they blend pretty well at the lowest.

A shot taken outside with an iPhone 4S…

…and the same scene taken with the HTC 8X’s camera.

Objects with the 8X’s camera.

HTC 8X’s camera in twilight, with a moving car.

On handling and using around both this phone and the Lumia 920, Ars Associate Writer Andrew Cunningham had this to say:

Coming from an iPhone or even a larger Android phone like the Optimus G, the 920’s size is striking (and not in a good way). The Optimus G fits a larger screen and much faster hardware into a thinner, lighter, and more attractive package. The smooth, rounded plastic body of the 920 also fails to give you much to grip….By contrast, the 8X feels much nicer in our hands. Its screen is a bit smaller—4.3 inches and 1280×720 compared to 4.5 inches and 1280×768 in the 920—but it’s also much thinner. Its back tapers more gradually than the 920, which I find makes it sit in my hand more comfortably. This tapered edge exists on all sides of the phone as well; the 920 has rounded left and right edges, but the top and bottom of the phone aren’t rounded at all. When I’m holding a smartphone, I usually find myself propping the bottom of the phone on my pinky finger to provide extra stability. The increased weight and flat bottom of the 920 made this much less comfortable.

…That said, this is a case where the specifications don’t quite capture what it’s like to actually use a piece of hardware every day. The 920 includes quite a few extra perks, but we feel that the 8X is generally the stronger, more comfortable phone for day-to-day use. Nokia’s phone just isn’t as comfortable to hold and to carry around.

Inside the 8X is a Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon processor with dual-core 1.5GHz Krait CPU and Adreno 225 GPU. Actual benchmarking applications are pretty scant across the Windows Phone platform and, sadly, none have emerged as sound performance evaluators. For now, we are restricted to our Javascript benchmarks from SunSpider and Google Octane v1.

The two benchmarks tell entirely different stories. The 8X performs terribly at Google Octane with a bench of 610, half the score of the iPhone 5, Sony’s Xperia TL, and far less than half the score of the Galaxy S III. But in Sunspider, on the other hand, it does fantastically with a bench of 901. This outscores the iPhone 5 and leaves all the other phones in the dust.

The usual caveats about Javascript performance obviously apply here: each platform uses different approaches, and tests showcase their strengths and weaknesses in different ways. The 8X isn’t an out-and-out success in this area, but subjectively speaking, it loads pages fast enough that we aren’t gravely concerned by its Octane performance.

The battery life of the HTC 8X is probably what leaves most to be desired. HTC rates the 1800mAh battery at up to 11.3 hours of talk time, but provides no estimates for video or music playback. We found that when we played videos, the battery got only 5.3 hours at medium brightness and full volume. To be fair, the speaker is quite loud, so we tried it again at half-brightness and half-volume: 5.6 hours, very little improvement. You could go lower still with the brightness and the volume, but we’re betting it wouldn’t help much.

The phone fares better in day-to-day use. When we used the phone for some messaging, e-mailing, Web-browsing, and a little music-listening, we found it lasted easily into the evening, until 8 or 9 p.m., before needing a charge.

Our usage is probably on the heavy side of normal, so if you don’t do so much messaging or browsing, you can get through the day with the 8X. Just watch your video usage. A “battery saver” mode does kick in for Windows Phone handsets (indicated by a heart symbol on the battery icon) when power runs low, which prevents apps from running in the background and turns off push notifications on e-mail.

When it comes to how the operating system and hardware work together, the HTC 8X is a joy to use. It’s nice to hold, responsive and quick, the on-screen keyboard works great, and there are virtually no hitches to speak of. But the same old problem plagues the Windows Phone platform: it lacks a wide selection of interesting apps. Many of our favorites have some relationship with Windows Phone, but it’s not the greatest: there is a Netflix app that doesn’t work so well; Spotify and Hulu have apps in the works but nothing official yet.

Though the platform has been out for a few weeks now, not many major players came prepared. It’s nice that they’ll get to it, but the problem is, well, they’ll get to it. To be fair, Microsoft was very cagey about Windows Phone 8 to the very last minute. It doesn’t seem like many, if any, developers got the drop on making their apps work for the new release.

Still the platform doesn’t seem like a priority for many. That’s fair, given Windows Phone’s market share is in the single digits, but it’s becoming a self-perpetuating problem. Developers don’t really care about Windows Phone because no one uses it, and no one uses it because developers don’t really care about it. If you plan to do much beyond what the stock apps on Windows Phone offer, this position in the market must be something you take into account. Be prepared to at best be patient and wait for developers to take it seriously. At worst, be comfortable with the reality it may never rise to the top of any development studio’s to-do list.

But for now, at least, we can enjoy some quality handsets, particularly this one. For our direct comparison of the HTC 8X against the Lumia 920 and more on why we like it better, check out part one of our Ultimate Smartphone Guide.

Good

Screen is bright and crisp with nice color distribution

Performance is fluid and quick throughout the OS

Speaker is loud and produces good sound

Body design is fantastic, feels great to hold

Camera takes nice shots

Bad

Battery life is on the short side

Hardware buttons are shallow so it’s hard to feel the press

Ugly

The Windows Phone store is still foundering in the shoals and has been for a year now, and we’re really wondering when—or even if—it will get the traction it needs